


New Journeys

by LtTanyaBoone



Category: Pan Am
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-15 06:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/524397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LtTanyaBoone/pseuds/LtTanyaBoone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Day has come for Colette and Kate and Laura attempt to cheer her up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	New Journeys

**Disclaimers:** Pan Am, the rights to the show and its characters do not belong to me. No money was made by this.  
 **Spoilers:** everything  
 **Pairings:** Colette/Dean

for [Mar](http://palmersabs.tumblr.com), who needed to be distracted

* * *

Dean fished the keys for his apartment from the pocket of his pants, tilting his head slightly to the side as he watched Colette lean against the wall.

She’d been subdued the whole evening, lost in thought so often that he had lost count of how many times he had talked to her only to get no answer. Still, when he had suggested cutting their evening short, she had insisted that they stay at the restaurant and then go see the movie, though he was pretty sure she hadn’t seen a single scene of it, staring at the screen blankly instead, her mind lost in memories.

“Hey.” he muttered, reaching out to stroke his finger along the palm of her hand. Colette jumped slightly and blinked, a soft blush coloring her cheeks as she realized she had drifted off again. “We can go to your place. Continue packing. Or just, lie in your bed.” he suggested softly, but his fiancée shook her head.

“ _Non_.” she muttered, trying a smile. “I am fine, Dean.” she told him, rolling her eyes at his skeptic look. “Or I will be.” she amended, reaching up to wrap her arms around his neck and kissing him gently. “I always knew it would end eventually.” Colette said, her voice barely audible. Dean wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, feeling her shudder against him. It made him think that maybe, his idea hadn’t been the best one. Though she did seem to want to be distracted from the fact that the flight back to New York today had been her very last for Pan Am, at least as a stewardess.

“Please don’t kill me.” he muttered into her ear as he opened the door to his apartment. Colette let go of him and gave him a confused look, walking into his apartment and wondering briefly if they had forgotten to turn off the lights earlier. Until she came into the living room and Kate and Laura rose from the couch, the younger Cameron running over to Colette as fast as her heels and dress allowed and wrapping her arms around the French woman in a tight hug.

Colette took a staggering step backwards in surprise and to balance Laura’s weight before she laughed and returned the hug, shaking her head lightly as she felt Kate wrap her arms around them, too.

“I’ll be at Ted’s place.” Dean muttered, pressing a soft kiss to Colette’s hair before he left, pulling the door closed behind him.

“Whose idea was this?” Colette asked when the sisters finally let her go. At least Laura let her go briefly and took a step to the side, giving Colette long enough to draw a deep breath before Kate hugged her tightly.

“Laura’s.” – “Kate’s.” the two women told her simultaneously, neither wanting to take the blame in case Colette had no interest in spending the evening with them, going through memories. Colette just shook her head, hiding her face in Kate’s neck briefly and enjoying having her friend close for a change. Ever since she had left Pan Am two years ago, Kate had been universally absent most of the time, rarely making it to debriefings that they still invited her to and in general seeming to have a much too busy life to be around for her former colleagues. Colette missed her terribly most of the time, though that had gotten a little better since they had managed to have one lunch per month, just the two of them.

“We tried to get Maggie here, too, but she’s disappeared.” Laura told her as Kate finally let Colette go and went over to Dean’s record player to put on one of albums by the Beatles, though her sister’s didn’t miss the redhead’s soft sniffle.

“What do you mean, disappeared?” Colette asked, allowing Laura to push her down onto the couch and hand her a glass of champagne.

“I mean that when I went to our old place, someone else was living in her apartment, has been for weeks. They had no forwarding address, nothing.”

“Laura.” Kate reprimanded her sister, shaking her head and taking the last of the champagne glasses. “The idea is to cheer her up, not depress her further.” the redhead scowled and Laura gave a sheepish shrug.

“Sorry.” she muttered, raising her glass and halting when she realized that their usual toast wasn’t really appropriate for the occasion.

“To Pan Am.” Colette still said the words, clinking her glass with those of her friends and taking a sip of the alcohol, her eyes widening. “Did you get the champagne from them for the occasion?” she asked Laura with a raised eyebrow, but the blond woman just shook her head and pointed at Kate wordlessly.

“I was feeling generous.” the redhead shrugged at Colette’s wide eyes. “It’s not every day that my friend joins me in the real world.” she joked, earning herself a slap to the arm from Laura.

“Speaking of real world, we met our new hire. She’s twenty-two. I feel old.” Laura lamented, prompting the other two women to laugh.

“What are we supposed to say to that?” Colette asked her with a smile, shaking her head at the younger women’s helpless shrug.

“Speaking of old.” Kate put her glass down and sat down next to Colette on the couch, producing a tattered photograph. “Remember this?” she asked her friend and handed it over. Colette gaped at the picture of their younger selves with the Big Ben in the background.

“How could I forget that trip? I felt so jet lagged the whole time.” the French woman shook her head. “Were we ever this young?” she asked, turning the picture and showing it to Laura, who gave a soft squeal and took it.

“Your hair’s so short there.” she remarked, remembering her own surprise when Kate had started stewardess school and one day her long braid suddenly disappeared, making way for the shorter, more modern hairstyle of the 60s. “Mother almost had a heart attack when you came home with it like that.” the blond woman laughed in memory, causing Kate to giggle.

“Yes. One of my best coups.” she laughed as Laura pulled out a shoebox from under the couch and lifted off the lid.

“Presents?” Colette asked, slightly surprised. When Kate left Pan Am, they had had their loudest debriefing to that day. Colette had never seen Kate’s apartment so packed and met so many faces from Pan Am, even some pilots had come. In the end, her friend had been crying an entire ocean, even though she had been leaving voluntarily and not because she had become too old to be a stewardess by Pan Am standards.

A party hadn’t been what Colette had wanted and shot down any attempt of Laura to convince her to throw one. She had said her goodbyes over the last months, went to debriefings of stewardesses she had flown with in the past or hugged them at work. The thought of never putting on that uniform again made her throat close up, and Colette hadn’t wanted an entire evening being reminded of that.

Which probably was why they were doing this in Dean’s apartment. In her own, Colette would have felt bad for throwing her friends out, but here she was just a guest, too, and could simply leave. Though it did surprise her a little that her fiancé was willing to hand over his bachelor’s pad to three women for the whole night. Then again, Colette had more or less lived here the last year, too, a lot of her clothing was already here since she planned on moving in in two weeks.

“Not exactly. More like, memories.” Laura informed her, upending the box and letting stacks of photographs fall onto the coffee table. “From our travels. All that I could find.” she said as both her sister and Colette gaped at the amount of pictures.

Kate slowly blinked, taking in the many pictures and the memories associated with them. She reached out and plucked one out, erupting into laughter at the sight of a rather disheveled Maggie and grim Laura looking at whoever was holding the camera.

“Hangovers were included in the price of our tickets.” the redhead laughed, turning the picture around for her sister to see. Laura groaned theatrically.

“Of course you’d pick that.” she shook her head, searching for one of her sister in the same state and laughing when she instead found one of a dripping Kate and a Colette that was standing next to her trying hard not to laugh. “Remember this?” she asked her sister and her friend. Colette smiled and took the picture.

“That was when that child shoved you into the fountain.” she grinned.

“He didn’t shove her; he was just playing catch with some friends.” Laura corrected her, only to have Kate glower at her.

“And I was in the way.” she said, remembering the wet trip back to the hotel and the cold she had gotten from that rather unplanned swim.

As they went through the pictures, it became apparent that it hadn’t just been Laura taking them, but as the one that was developing most of their films, she had made herself a few copies. There was a picture of the younger Cameron riding an elephant on her first trip to Bangkok, and one of Colette and Kate fast asleep on the bench in a hotel lobby when they had been forced to make an unscheduled landing and had had to wait for hours for a room in the middle of the night. Quite a few photographs showed their ever-changing group of colleagues at debriefings in bars, or sometimes in fancy dresses attending a formal function as representatives of Pan Am. There was a picture of Colette and Laura dancing a waltz together in Vienna on the street while a man was playing a fiddle in the background.

Soon they were laughing so hard they had tears running down their cheeks, sharing and remembering the most ridiculous stories. Luggage lost as they arrived in Scandinavia and having to buy new winter clothes while Kate was shivering in her uniform and the shop owner didn’t understand a word the women were saying. Ice fishing and sledding during an unforeseen layover when the weather drastically changed and they were grounded for almost a week. The pilots chasing them down the beach in Italy when they complained they were too hot but didn’t want to go for a swim, either. Posing in front of the Eiffel Tower and feeding pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Trying to make the palace guard laugh in London and posing with police in Berlin on another trip much later.

Even the picture of Colette and Bridget standing in front of the Soviet building in Moscow made them laugh. Memories of her former friend had long ago stopped paining Colette as much as they once had. Now all that was left was a dull ache, grief for a friendship that Colette wasn’t sure had truly existed, or at least not on the level she had believed it to be.

Some of the pictures showed them in quieter moments. When they hadn’t been aware of someone taking their picture, most often staring off into space, their minds far away from the present when whoever had held the camera decided to snap the picture.

There was one of Colette resting her head on Kate’s shoulder as the redhead had her eyes closed, taken on the Tube in London. Maggie staring blankly at the page of a magazine. Laura gazing at the sky as she was tanning in the tropics.

“What are you going to do now?” Laura asked, her voice soft and cutting through Colette’s thoughts.

“Plan the wedding, of course.” the French woman shrugged, pausing when she found a picture of Dean in the mix. The look he had on his face was that of pure adoration, he was smiling slightly to himself, his eyes sparkling so much that it made the breath catch in her throat. “When was this taken?” Colette asked her friend. Laura leaned over and looked at the picture, furrowing her brows before she erupted into laughter.

“Monaco.” she informed her friend. “You offered to get drinks, Ted went with you to help you carry them. Dean kept staring at you the whole time, you turned around once and blew him a kiss.” she reminded Colette, making her blush a little.

“Oh, if we’re gonna talk about the wedding, please tell me you have settled on a date finally.” Kate almost begged, making Colette shake her head. “How am I supposed to organize a bachelorette party if I have no idea when you’re getting married?”

“It’s a little… complicated.” Colette sighed, brushing her hair behind her ear.

“Why?” Laura asked, looking up from a stack of pictures she was going through.

“I know Dean wants his father to be there and if he doesn’t come, he’ll be sad, but right now they are just getting to understand each other a little, and Dean would never ask him or push the topic.”

Kate raised an eyebrow at her friend. “You’re willing to wait until Lowrey senior has finally managed to pull his head out of his butt?” she asked, ignoring her sister as Laura hissed her name in warning.

Colette hesitated before nodding. “Yes.” she answered. “Because it’s not just about the wedding. Dean’s parents are the only chance at grandparents our children will get, and I want them to have that.” she elaborated, shaking her head slightly and putting on a soft smile. “Besides, it is winter now and much too cold for the style of dress I had in mind.” Colette added. When she looked over at the other two women she suddenly found that Laura had tears in her eyes. It instantly made her feel bad about mentioning her lack of family.

“I’m going to miss you so much!” the younger Cameron suddenly blurted and launched herself at Colette, hugging her tightly. Colette wrapped her arms around her and let out a teary laugh.

“I am not disappearing.” she reminded the younger woman as Kate reached out and patted her sister’s back gently. Laura sniffled and sat down next to Colette heavily.

“I know, but… everyone I’ve started working with has left. What am I supposed to do in Paris without you?” she asked Colette. The French woman wrapped her arm around Laura’s shoulder.

“Pick up some French cheese and marmalade, because you’re the one who gets to jet around the world and has to stock up our supplies.” she said, drawing a soft laugh from the American. Kate reached out and filled up their glasses again, handing them to her sister and her friend.

“A toast. To new journeys. Wherever they may lead.”

“To new journeys.” Laura and Colette echoed, clinking their glasses with Kate’s.

_fin.  
_


End file.
